Light over Buffalo, NY

The report, as filed

First I want you to know I am an alien skeptic. I have an open mind but I'm only going to believe what I see and experience myself. I make no claims these were alien objects. I would classify them as unexplained moving lights in the night sky. Because I'm in an urban area with houses and trees all around the horizon and I only have a cheap compass my orientation may be slightly off. On Saturday, August 22, 2020, at 9PM EST I went out to see if I could view comet Neowise. I had been trying to find it all summer without luck. I'm in a urban area with a lot of light pollution and the comet is faint so I never had any success. At 10PM EST I went out again. By this time it was fully dark and there were large white puffy clouds moving swiftly from WNW but the space between the clouds was * crystal clear * and I could easily see stationary stars. Suddenly I noticed a fast moving "star" traveling from WSW coming from behind clouds. It was white and as bright as Venus. At first I thought it might be the International Space Station as it was moving at a constant speed high behind the clouds but since it was moving slower I discounted it as the ISS. I watched it travel in a straight line moving from WSW to North at a constant speed disappearing and reappearing between breaks in the clouds. When it passed the Big Dipper, two more bright white moving "stars" came into view between the clouds. One heading WNW and one heading West. They were dimmer than the first moving "star" and moving at about the same rate of speed but slower (I assume because they were farther away). Unfortunately the white puffy clouds were increasing so the moving "stars" were difficult to track as they disappeared behind the fast moving puffy-white clouds. As the clouds were increasing I began to look for spaces between clouds and I looked almost directly up and saw another very bright moving "star" heading WSW. It was white and as bright as the first moving "star" but the clouds were increasing and it disappeared behind the clouds . I eventually lost track of the first moving "star" behind the ever increasing cloud-cover as it traveled North. The moving "stars" weren't an illusion caused by the moving clouds. I could clearly see fixed, stationary stars and the moving "stars". The entire incident lasted less than 5 minutes. I'm about 5 miles from an airport to the North and during this same period of time I could see two low flying planes approaching the airport in front of the clouds (lower than the clouds). The moving white "stars" were not planes. The planes were easy to identify because they have red, green, and white blinking landing lights and moved like planes I see all the time. I also had another incident on the last Saturday of May. It was 10PM EST and I went out to toss some trash. It was a clear night. Whenever I go outside at night I always take a moment to look at the night sky; seeing which constellations are visible. As I said, I live in an urban area with lots of light pollution and there are houses and trees that block my view so I'm limited by what I can see; usually only the Big Dipper and Orion depending on the time of year. On a good clear night if I look out a second floor window I can see the Pleiades. Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn are easy to locate. As I turned to the house to go inside, I was standing in the driveway looking SE. About 45-50 degrees above the horizon I saw a redish-orange "star". At first I thought it might be Mars which is fairly common and easy to see. However it just didn't look exactly like Mars. My next thought was it might be a candle sky lantern someone released so I stood still to see if it would drift. It didn't. It was stationary. Then, without notice, this redish-orange "star" shot directly away from me and in less than a second disappeared. After these two sighting I have gone outside when the night sky is clear but I haven't seen anything since. Best regards

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #159130). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.